Man, oh, man...I have not been keeping up on my blog posting and image sharing like I should! Summer is a crazy busy time for me, so sharing new work has been on the back burner for awhile. But the whole point of this photography stuff is to share my photos with you lovely people! So that's why I made sure to carve out some time today to post these new pictures from Little Corona Del Mar Beach in Newport Beach, CA.

I've been to Little Corona a thousand times before, sometimes just to take pictures, but more often than not I head there with a student for a good old-fashioned Orange County private photography lesson. There is a great cluster of massive rock formations to the north end of the beach that has had my lens pointed at it more times than I can count. And it's a really good place to practice manual metering and filter use for landscape photography with my students.

Since I obtained a Lee Big Stopper 10-stop neutral density filter, I've been playing around a lot with ultra-long shutter speeds. It's a lot of fun getting that shutter speed down in the 30-second to 2-minute range when photographing the ocean because it turns the water into an ethereal fog that departs wildly from reality. And there's something about these ultra-long exposures at the beach with a nice cluster of rocks that just looks awesome in black and white. It takes a pretty basic landscape scene and turns it into a work of art. Sure, it ain't postcard material, but who wants that anyway? The resulting look is more suited for large wall art or a nice calendar image.

I did all of these photos on analog black and white film, but the techniques are the same with digital. You need a low ISO (my film was ISO 200), a small aperture (f/22 or f/32 on all of these) and a nice dark neutral density filter to hold back the light even more. The name of the game is "cut down light coming through the lens as much as possible" so that the shutter speed can slow way down. Oh, and best be using a rock-solid tripod because there is no way you're holding the camera still for this long!

The shutter speed for the first 2 pictures came out to 1 minute. Over the course of one minute, the water advances and retreats so many times that all you get is a nice layer of fog crawling through the gaps between the rocks. I love the way it complements these rock formations at Corona Del Mar with their almost Gothic shape rising up out of the mist. The final shot featured here utilized a shutter speed of only 1 second on account of the brighter light source and lack of ND filter. The movement of the seaweed winding between the boulders was a nice little surprise when I developed the film.

If you're in Orange County, head down to Little Corona Del Mar Beach in Newport Beach sometime. It's worth an exposure or two.